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HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide (6th Edition)
$49.99
I have purchased many O'Reily books in the past and have been very happy with them. In fact, I will purchase an O'Reily book above all others unless there is a bad review. Maybe I am just a OBC type person. Anyways, so far the book seems good as a reference, well laid out, comprehensive.

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
$39.99
I'm a C/Java coder who's been getting into web designing as a hobby. I have to say, the approach the Head First folks took with this book seemed a little unconventional at first, but after I'd devoured the first 200 pages and hardly felt like I was breaking a mental sweat I realized: it works! The authors are thorough, accurate, and enjoyable to read, and the material builds a great and easy-to-understand foundation before it takes you right into the realm of building valid XHTML. I'm a little old to relate to all the "hipsters" featured as characters in the book, but they do make the material that much more engaging, and add an element of fun to the projects. Those projects are non-trivial, and result in your learning to code some pretty nice web pages--and the authors do a fine job of presenting alternate methods to achieve similar results and are honest about the shortcomings of each.

I highly recommend this as your first book on programming HTML/CSS! I've ordered the Head First Javascript and PHP volumes for my further learning experiences.

The Ultimate HTML Reference
$44.95
I am taking a class in website building using HTML and CSS. I ordered the book after taking my 1st class, and have found it very helpful. It is very userfriendly with examples for every tag. I definitely recommend this to anyone.

Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics
$44.99
I felt the need to express how well written this book is for the beginning web designer. The author doesn't bog the reader down with overly complex examples of code. I've been designing web pages using Dreamweaver for a few years now and never bothered with the code. I've always created my content in Photoshop and just dropped the images into the software. After reading through this book, I am not only able to simplify my web pages through code editing, but also, was able to optimize my graphics content.
Right now, I am now trudging through a book to learn JavaScript. I am getting through the book, but not nearly as easily as I did the Learning Web Design book. To be fair, the subject is a bit more complex, but the way that the JavaScript book is written causes me to have to constantly look up unexplained technical terms and syntax of the code examples to figure out why they work. I never had to do that with the Learning Web Design book.